Poetry highlights in honor of National Poetry Month!
Poet of the Day: Evelyn Lau
Born to Chinese Canadian parents in 1971, Evelyn Lau knew she wanted to be a writer from an early age.  At eighteen, she published her memoir, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1994). It was made into a movie starring Sandra Oh. Her collection You Are Not Who You Claim  (1994) is a short collection (59 pages) that confronts the harsh reality of teens navigating homelessness, abuse, poverty, and addiction. In her sixth book of poetry, A Grain of Rice  (2012), she explores cultural history, and place—urban and social issues, and the influence of writers on her life and career, specifically John Updike. She is the author of twelve books and seven volumes of poetry and was the 2011–2014 Poet Laureate of Vancouver.
This poet belongs in our classrooms because…
Lau’s verse engages themes so many teens are navigating in their lives—family, love, grief, isolation, and consumerism. In a 2010 article, she is quoted : "In this culture we are so driven and so distant. There is a hunger by a segment of the population to examine where we’re at in a true, deep, meaningful way. I go to poetry again and again, and never tire of it." She sees writing as rumination and values revision, so every interview offers insight into the craft of poetry while offering artful examples of elegy, confessional, extended metaphor, and free verse poems. Now an adult, poems from "The Quiet Room" (1994) to "Grandfather" (2012) show how writing is about place, time, and perspective, drawing from concrete spaces while weaving in personal and social perspectives.
A Poem by Evelyn Lau
The Quiet Room: Psychiatric Assessment Unit Vancouver General Hospital
( You Are Not Who You Claim , 1994)

Naked feet
flop over the edge of the mattress
in Quiet Room #4.

The silence is a dead creature
stirring decay into the air conditioning
disguised by water dripping from a tap
a roll of toilet paper unbalancing from the toilet rim
scuttling across the floor,
noises swarming like flies over a carcass.

The observation camera blinks
at the flower of blood wilting on the ground
puckered as an old woman's lips,
the signature of a nurse stealing life
through a hole in the patient's arm.

Her dreams unfold now, in the air:
knives licking doctors' throats
dynamite to fragment the brick walls:
the cold barrels, their fear!
mirrored back into her eyes.

The observation camera swivels its attention
to the next patient:
his screaming.
Other Poems by Evelyn Lau with Classroom Connections
  • “The Quiet Room: Psychiatric Assessment Unit Vancouver General Hospital” is set in Quiet Room #4. The images within this poem are disturbing and intriguing to high school to students, so be gentle with them as they uncover meaning. Who is the speaker, and what is their position in this scene? Who or what is the subject, the “her”? What is the significance of the metaphors: “the silence is a dead creature”? Is this a literal or figurative poem, and why might that matter? Can it/should it be read as an extended metaphor if we look at the author’s biography?

  • Using direct address and apostrophe in an elegiac epistle form, Lau responds to the death of John Updike in “Dear Updike.” For personal writing, this poem can invite students into an understanding of craft but also how poem can function as a medium for addressing people in our lives who are distant or absent. For more distant writing or as a literary response piece, students can select a line or passage from a book, movie, or poem, and respond in this form.

  • Listen to Lau read “Grandfather” at minute 7:04. She shares in this short verse the story of where her family came from, noticing her mother and grandfather’s relationship dynamics as a family of fourteen adjusted to life in Canada after immigrating from Hong Kong. This poem invites readers to uncover the history of their family and relationships between their grandparents and parents. Our parents were once teens, too. Invite students to interview their parents or grandparents about their childhoods and render the interview into a poem.

  • “Blindness” captures the claustrophobia of the household where she grew up, reflecting back to when she was ten years old. (Listen at minute 11:45.) Lau demonstrates narrative poetry as a means to process traumatic memories. Much of her writing is visceral, so take care when selecting poems to share with students. “Blindness” shows how student-poets can engage with Lau’s narrative as a way of nurturing empathy or sympathy for lives beyond their own and as a model for writing into their past.

  • Try a poem every week of the school year. While I write a poem a day with students in April, we actually read a poem every week throughout the school year. In this blog post on Ethical ELA, I show how students read a poem with a partner, prepare a lesson, and lead the class in a discussion every Friday throughout the school year.
Sarah J. Donovan is a junior high ELA teacher in Illinois. She earned an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction and a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She wrote Genocide Literature in Middle and Secondary Classrooms: Rhetoric, Witnessing, and Social Action in a Time of Standards and Accountability (2016) and a young adult verse novel Alone Together (2018). Her blog, Ethical ELA, explores teaching English language arts in a time of standards and testing. Follow her @MrsSJDonovan and ethicalela.com .